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Architecture And And Zen Calligraphy: Shaping Spiritual Space, Rubina R. Siddiqui

Masters Theses

“The ancients penned characters as a means of spiritual elevation, for it was considered possible to express the essential spirit of the universe through brushwork. …the act of writing a character is seen as parallel to the universal process of creation, and an embodiment of the principles that govern life.” -Barbara Aria

“The way a word is written can convey as much meaning as the word itself.” -Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang

“Alas, one who does not enter the gate of this art will not glimpse its mysteries!” -Sun Qianli, Treatise on Calligraphy

Calligraphy is the means by which the …

Space / Anti-Space: Revisiting A Relationship Of Opposites, David Dayne Cook

Masters Theses

In the article “Space and Anti-Space” Steven Kent Peterson states that:

…our objective (as architects) is an elaborate condition of spaces, a collision of inventions; not a neutral ground of anti-space but a plasma of spatial fields promoting multiple interactions, choices and opportunities.”

The article focuses on the separation of the two and promotes the exclusion of anti-space in favor of space. Therefore, it is the contention of this thesis that architects can, in fact, fuse the aspects of space and anti-space in order to create more meaningful places than either can do alone.

The vehicle chosen to explore this …

Wound/ Healing/ Scar: An Urban School, Heather R. Stone

Masters Theses

The American city contains large brownfields and urban wastelands, remnants of our industrial past. The sprawling and unchecked development of our cities combined with short-sighted zoning laws and vast industrial infrastructure created these gashes in the post-industrial landscape. Old rail yards, industrial processes, abandoned buildings, interstates, and abandoned riverfronts and wharves wound the urban landscape, and the reactionary response is to clear the site and start over. Yet as Carol Burns states, there is no such thing as a “clear” site- all sites contain permanent imprints of past and present events. This thesis posits that architecture possesses the power to …

An Engage-Ment Of The Significant Everyday, Suzanne M. Walker

Masters Theses

This paper investigates the engagement of our everyday lives with the place we inhabit. Three case studies introduce us to engagement through architecture and the experiences that are created. In conjunction with case studies, site analysis of the ecological and cultural site will reveal significant everyday experiences for the individual. Architecture can then act as a filter through which the site trickles into the interior experiences of the individual’s everyday life.

Reviving Community Identity Using Movement In And Through Public Space, Nekia Strong

Masters Theses

“…the interweaving of human patterns. They are full of people doing different things, with different reasons and different ends in view, and the architecture reflects and expresses this difference...Being human, human beings are what interest us most. In architecture as in literature and the drama, it is the richness of human variation that gives vitality and color to the human setting…” – Raskin (Jacobs 229)

This thesis asserts that the greater opportunity for people to interact socially, the greater sense of identity a community has. Over time, as historically defined public space has been in decline, so has the level …

The Experience Of Place And Body In The Built Form, Joshua R. Shinn

Masters Theses

“The place is the concrete manifestation of man’s dwelling, and his identity depends on his belonging to places.” (Norberg-Schulz 1980, 6)

Human existence is defined by our being in the world; the daily actions of individuals in places over time. To enhance this existence, it is necessary for us to connect to place, to become aware of the relationship between body and place. Architecture provides a venue to bring together body, place, and time. Architecture can articulate the experience of being-in-the-world; therefore, through the experience of architecture an individual can become aware of place. As we come to …

City, Interrupted : A Study Of Infrastructure And The Urban Condition, Seaneen Lucretia Murphy

Masters Theses

Urban renewal and revitalization, considered an essential component to the rebuilding and reshaping of most promising communities, customarily attaches with its definition a “for the common good” connotation. The efforts of city and regional planners with local governments concerning renewal projects is one of offering great change and providing potential to a sector of a city that had not previously been successful; one where every member of the community seemingly would benefit from such projects. The strategies, when executed, most specifically concerning the Eisenhower Interstate System, sought to create affirmative change within the infrastructure of metropolitan areas and provide a …

Tragedy, Loss, And Memory: The Use Of Rhetoric In Making And Marking A Site, David James Baker

Masters Theses

How can architecture relate to sites of tragedy and loss by serving as an artifact disinterred, reminding a society of an important and forgotten event in its cultural history? I use rhetoric to understand the meaning of sites as they respond to a specific tragic moment. The site's physical objects and narratives influence the formation of the architecture in this thesis. I am interested in the rhetorical implications of the scene setting in post-modern plays, which open an interaction between actors and audience. This interaction functions through an abstract method of visualization, one we can use as architects to understand …

Architecture Of Mutual Permeation, Bolin Briscoe Evans

Masters Theses

“Human life is not intended to oppose nature and endeavor to control it, but rather to draw nature into an intimate association in order to find union with it...this kind of sensibility… de-emphasizes the physical boundary between residence and surrounding nature and establishes instead a spiritual threshold... While screening man’s dwelling from nature, it attempts to draw nature inside.” --Tadao Ando¹

The result of humanity’s dominant approach to nature has led us to separate ourselves from the natural environment, both physically and spiritually. As J. B. Jackson explains, “we have persisted in separating man from nature and …